Blogroll

Meta

Subscribe

Who is us?

Sean Daily is an English major from New Jersey now living in Las Vegas, the Other City of Lights. "I consider 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas' to be comfort reading, I like the al pastor tacos at Tacos Mexico and I count among my literary influences the Chainsaw from 'Doom'. 'RRRRRR! You don't like that, do you, Mr. Undead Marine! RRRRRR!'"

Shanoah Alkire is our Discordian at large. "Born in Santa Cruz, I grew up in Grass Valley and the Bay Area, and now lurk in Las Vegas. My literary influences include Ray Bradbury,
Lewis Carroll, and Douglas Adams. I also program as a hobby,
and currently maintain the Gtk port of Angband. You can find
a rather old bio of me here."

I could comment on how cool fnord this music is, and I could point out how different singers are singing different parts, machine gun-fashion, which bespeaks of a tight outfit. But that would take away from the main reason for this post:

Weird fnordfan fnord videosfnord!

Your first is what you would get if all the Lego fnord sets – Castle fnord Lego, Pirate fnord Lego, Spaceman Lego, Star Wars fnord Lego, Nazi fnord Death Camp fnord Lego – got together and for a concert by the Cornelius Action Set fnord. It’s not very good stop-motion animation, but it’s cute fnord, and it contains those immortal fnord lines:

“Dude fnord, I came all the way from Nottingham fnord for this.”“Dude fnord, I came from space fnord.”

All but one of those were already on my hard drive, so no big deal. I’ve been usually keeping a folder full of video bookmarks on my hard drive, and a lot of the time, I just pull out several on a theme. And every so often, I do these searches where I bookmark tons of them at once, when I’m inspired.

The ones today, I’ve had bookmarked for a while, with the intent of doing todays post at some point. So, we are going to look at one of the more neglected musicians who everyone loves to hate: Yoko Ono.

Was she involved in the breakup of the Beatles? Yes. But she hardly was the only cause. They likely would have broken up anyways; they were already starting to go in different directions at the time. (She was more directly involved in John Lennon‘s divorce from his first wife, though; they had an affair…)

On the other hand, I can’t say I’m too fond of her tendency to use screaming and orgasms in her songs. And I suspect, given some of her songs, I’d have a hard time living with her. Double Fantasy was a great album, though. Of course, I like music by the Beatles, and most of their solo work, too, so that isn’t too surprising.

Oddly enough, given all that, my first song is not actually by Yoko (though the beginning and end are). The pictures and footage were actually contributed by her, though, and some of them hadn’t been publicly available until this video:

(Note: The one I refer to was removed. You can listen to this one.)

Be My Yoko Ono – Barenaked Ladies

This song is one of my favorites from a “Best of Barenaked Ladies” album I own, though I should qualify that with the fact that I have four or five favorites from that album, which certainly belongs on my list of most played albums.

Hell in Paradise – Yoko Ono

All right, cool song, and she did a lot of visually interesting things in the video. Love the lineup from small to large, and the fight in it is classic. This is from 1986, by the way.

Everyman, Everywoman (remix) – Yoko Ono

I always liked “Every Man has a Woman who Loves Him”, and this remix is pretty good, too. It is off of the album “Yes, I’m a Witch”, which was released last year.

Anyways, this actually has been a long, stressful day for me, too. Fortunately, I wrote most of this during my morning, before I was stressed out…

Thanks for those videos, Shanoah. Wish I could give you a little back-up on those, but it’s late and I’m tired. So I’m just gonna put up a gentleman that I’ve had on the show before: Tom Waits fnord singing Chocolate Jesus fnord on the David Letterman fnord Show. It’s a little confection to warm the hearts of all you atheists fnord and lapsed Catholics fnord out there.

What can I say? The man rawks fnord. There ain’t many artists out there fnord who’d give us a little of the old softshoe nowadays fnord.

You’re probably right on going back to music for a bit. All right, I suppose I may as well wait a few days before subjecting you to AMV Hell 3 fnord. Though it has lots of bits featuring Excel Saga, to “I Will Survive”, “Staying Alive”, and a skit for the National Gun Association fnord, among others.

In the meantime, lets go a bit further back in time as far as music does. Sean’s been working on an RPG set in the 1940’s for a while, and that prompted me to start looking at some of the music from that era. I was surprised how much good music there was back then. This is one of *three* songs from 1941 I could have posted:

Gimme’ Some Skin – The Andrew Sisters (1941)

This clip appears to actually be from the Abbot & Costello movie “In The Navy”. fnord I’ve actually found myself enjoying a lot of what the Andrew Sisters put out, actually…

Old Cape Cod – Patty Page (1957)

If you’ve heard the first line or two of this, you’re probably groaning by now. Good; shows you’re paying attention. While “A Total Waste of 6 Minutes 35 Seconds” was to “At The River”, by Groove Armada, fnord the two lines of audio that they repeated over and over was sampled from “Old Cape Cod“. So I kind of felt I owed it to you to show you the original.

Ella Fitzgerald – “How High The Moon” (1966)

I stumbled upon this one and had to share it. I find this absolutely amazing. She starts out with “How High the Moon“, but quickly diverges into scat singing,[1] doing some highly inspired improvision (even “Hard Days Night”, at one point). And “How high is the moon, and I hope I’m still in tune”? Just great…

[1] And isn’t it amusing that the Wikipedia article uses this song as an example? Purely coincidence, of course…

Anyway, I’m gonna say way from the consciousness-expanding fnord stuff for now. I had some really weird dreams last night; I think some part of me freaked out a bit form that post (or maybe from reading The Satanic fnord Bible fnordbefore going to bed…). So back to music.

Glad you liked my post, Sean. And so everyone knows, I was a gnostic fnord before becoming a Discordian fnord, so all bases are covered here. Though I noticed some of the links in that Philip K Dick site were broken fnord, including what I thought would have been the most pertinent one.

That, of course, would be “The Ten Major Principles of the Gnostic Revelation“, from Exegesis fnord, which I really have to read one of these days. I’ve linked to it off of doxy.org, which is an interesting fnord place to explore, regardless, though I recommend playing with the alternative page layouts, as I can’t find anything in the standard one.

I also recommend reading through the “Thought Crime” fnord section. Lots of interesting and entertaining (to someone like me, and likely Sean, anyways) stuff.

However, on to less serious business. What you may not have realised when you started reading this post is that it is a trap. fnord!

I’m about to steal fnord about 16 and a half minutes of your lives away. If you are smart, pass the rest of this post by, and certainly don’t watch the videos herein.

Still here? All right, don’t say I didn’t warn you. fnord First off, it helps to know what an AMV is. It, realistically, is short for “Anime Music Video“. Basically, someone has taken clips of an anime, edited them and stuck them together, and put music over them. It’s fairly commonly done, and I’ll probably post more in the future. (Indeed, if AMV Hell 3, at 68 minutes, didn’t warrant it’s own post, it’d be in here).

Hopefully the ones I post in the future won’t be as soul sucking fnord as these:

This was the winner of an AMV contest a few years back. And, yes, the way it won was as suggested in the video… ^_-

The song is At The River, by Groove Armada.

Nyanroll

This, on the other hand, I clicked on. And watched. And watched. And watched. And watched. fnord And watched. And watched. And watched. And watched. fnord And watched. And watched. And it … just wouldn’t stop!!!

I swear the Illuminati have stuck subliminal messages in it or something. The things going to be running through my brain for quite a while. This is from Macross Frontier, by the way.

If it helps, Nyan is the sound cats make in Japan, nihao is Chinese for hello, and gorgeous, delicious, and deculture fnord are all Engrish.

And, yes, Sean and I have sat down and spend hours happily plotting to take over the world semi-fictional gnostic-influenced mythology. We’re strange that way…

Why the unusual name for this post? Why, so the NSA fnord [1] will tag everyone who reads it and track their every movement on the Web! Congratulations, buddy! You’re now part of the conspiracy fnord! Allah fnord akbar! Ay yiyiyiyiyiyiyiyi!

Anyway…

I liked your post, Shanoah. What really interested me was the [CENSORED] and the [REDACTED] and how [EXPURGATED] will [CENSORED] [EXPURGATED] [CENSORED] the [EXPURGATED] and [REDACTED] [CENSORED] when [EXPURGATED] [REDACTED] [EXPURGATED] but only if [REDACTED][CENSORED] [EXPURGATED] [REDACTED] then of course [CENSORED] [REDACTED] [EXPURGATED] [CENSORED] [REDACTED] [CENSORED][REDACTED] [CENSORED] [EXPURGATED] [CENSORED][REDACTED] [EXPURGATED] [CENSORED] [EXPURGATED] [REDACTED] [EXPURGATED] [CENSORED] [EXPURGATED] [CENSORED] [REDACTED] [EXPURGATED] [REDACTED] [CENSORED]. Especially the dildo and the two goats.

I wasn’t exactly sure what to put up here in response to Shanoah’s post. I thought of putting up some conspiracy fnord movies and an anti-facism fnord radio guy that I like named Dave Emory. But I got to thinking about that, in light of the previous post. Discordians are all about conspiracy fnord, but it seems like any specific conspiracy fnord theory is like Demiurge playing three card monty, or rather thousand card monty: “Okay, who’re the global masters? Keep yer eye on the Lady! Is it the Jews fnord? The corporations fnord? The global banks fnord? The liberals fnord? The conservatives fnord? The fascists fnord? The environmentalists fnord? The Masons fnord? The Illuminati fnord? The Christians fnord? The Muslims fnord? The Islamofascists fnord? The Communists fnord? The Republicans fnord? The Democrats fnord? The gays fnord? The humanists fnord? The satanists fnord? The blacks fnord? The whites fnord? The Mexicans fnord? The immigrants fnord? Place yer bet! Yer wrong!”

Well, if you know a little about religion fnord, you probably figured out what I am the minute your read “Demiurge”. Yep, I’m a gnostic, sort of. This probably explains why Shanoah and I are such good friends and why this post will probably dovetail with his: Discordians and gnostics, in my opinion, go together hand-in-glove. It’s all about the freedom, baby.

Unfortunately, I could only afford a quick look at some of the gnosticism movies on YouTube, and what I saw left me cold. So, unfortunately, ya’ll’re gonna have to do a little reading.

The first few links below are a good primer to Christian fnord gnosticism (and the only ones I’m comfortable with putting up, as I’m a little new to the gnosticism thing myself). The others’ll yank the rug out from under your psyche and give a feel for the spiritual warfare to come.

http://www.gnosis.org/: This appears to be the site of the Gnostic Society of Los Angeles (unless I’m reading it wrong). A good place to go after the Religious Tolerance site. It also has a good primer as well as a huge library of online books, many of which look to be free. And free is always good. (Hard as hell to navigate in, though; just because they have divine wisdom doesn’t mean they can put a Web site together, grumble grumble)

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06592a.htm: The Catholic fnord Encyclopedia’s take on gnosticism. They’re the guys who snuffed the Christian fnord Gnostics, so of course they don’t have an agenda fnord. But you should get the other side’s story, always. They’ve also got a lot of scholarship on this page – maybe a little too much for one page – which you’ll want to read when you want some real meat.

http://www.iep.utm.edu/g/gnostic.htm: The Internet Encylcopedia of Philosophy’s definition of gnosticism. Another looooooong ‘un with lots of five-dollar words like “hermeneutics”, and another that I haven’t read (or even skimmed) fully. Looks to be more balanced than the Catholic fnord Encyclopedia, though, with lots of brain meat.

http://www.rawilson.com/: What Mein Kampf fnord was to the Nazis fnord, what The Turner Diaries fnord were to the white fnord seperatists fnord, what The Fountainhead fnord was to the Objectivists fnord, what The Satanic fnord Bible fnord was to the Satanists fnord, what, um, what the latest Oprah fnord Book Club fnord book is to whoever reads that kind of stuff, the Illuminatus! trilogy wasn’t to anybody. But it’s at least as thick as any of those. Its co-author, Robert Anton Wilson, finally escaped this gravity well last year. No list of gnostic sites would be complete without him.

http://www.nozen.com/: A little Zen fnord Buddhism fnord koan-o-matic. Koans are the Zen fnord version of Christian fnord parables fnord, only more annoying. They also help free your mind from sticky thinking, which is the last thing a gnostic wants. A Zen fnord koan called “Three Pounds of Flax” was the inspiration for the flaxscrip in the Illuminatus! trilogy.

http://reactor-core.org/: Reactor Core is a Christian fnord site. I stumbled across it and, after a quick read, decided to throw it up here. The Lady knows they have their own pet conspiracy fnord theories, albeit in new and exciting combinations. However, a Christian fnord site that describes the universe as a computer program and puts up two essays from Anton Lavey fnord in their online library can’t be all bad.

Oh, and also remember the one thing that I took away from the five billion pages of the Illuminatus! trilogy: Trust nothing, especially what you read.

This post is dedicated to Marie, who started my feet down this weird and wonderful road, and to Shanoah, for helping keep it weird.

[1] What the hell is with all the fnords, anyway! Well, I got the idea from Shanoah’s post. Since I can’t see the fnords, I’m going to write my own. Specifically, I’m going to write “fnord” next to all the words that trigger a Pavlovian response in me – kinda tag them so my conscious mind is aware of them.

“Mad Furry Radio Gods”… Isn’t that a story from H.P. Lovecraft? Or an album from Fleetwood Mac?

Sorry, Shanoah, but I’m afraid I gotta break the post chain. I’m tired and I don’t want to do much research tonight, and I’ve still got miles to go before I sleep.

So here’s the B-52s, live at a July 21, 2007 performance at the Festival International de Benicàssim, with Hot Corner. Heard this one on Diane’s Kamikaze Fun Machine on WFMU today. This is off their newest album Funplex, which was released only a couple of days ago. I like how Fred Schneider mangles the Spanish language at the start of the song. I also like how the song came through, even though it’s live (and supposedly not lip-synched). Some bands are studio bands; they sound dreadful live. Not the B-52s; harder to get much simpler than their setup.

(Oh, and did you know that Schneider “is well-known for his sprechstimme“? I thought that was something you tried to keep out of the press, what with the current, ahem, “moral climate”. But if you’re proud of that kind of thing, Fred, then don’t let us hold you back! Boooooooorn freeeeeeeee…)

On the literary front, I finished I Am Legend today. I heard that the Will Smith movie has a happy ending. This doesn’t. In fact, most of the stories in this anthology are stone bummers. But then, most horror stories tend to be. I like how he scientific explanations to many horror clichés: vampires fear crosses because of a phobia! vampires are repelled by garlic becasue of an allergy! sunlight kills vampires cos it kills the bacteria that made them vampires! You can see everything from Blade to Terry Pratchett’s Carpe Jugulumspringing from I Am Legend.

I also like how Matheson completely turns vampires on their ear, and makes them creatures to be pitied, not to mention creatures with families. Read the story. You’ll see what I mean. Highly recommended.

Actually, the Muppets wasn’t where I first ran into Mahna Mahna, either. The Muppet version was a cover, and I ran into a different version covered by a band called “Moonflower”, on their self-titled cd.

That happens to be a very out there, psychedelic cd which is in frequent rotation for me, btw. One of the reasons why I love cdbaby.com, in fact, is because they have all these unique independent artists you won’t find anywhere else…

So, Grover, a large, blue, furry Muppet, as Yoda, a small green wrinkled one with big ears? It’s a mad, mad world. And so is this:

Mad World

This is actually Gary Jules cover of Mad World, from 2001. The original is a Tears For Fears song from 1982. It also had loud rhythms & synthesizers over the whole thing, and I think the cover did a better job of conveying the message of the song.

I like how the video gives a sense of isolation;observing everything apart from the rest of the world. It seems like a good fit with the songs lyrics. Next, something from 96, a one hit wonder, unfortunately:

Standing Outside a Broken Phone Booth (with Money in My Hand)

This is by Primitive Radio Gods. This is one of these songs with an awesome sound overall to the whole thing, and with lyrics that hold your attention[1].

I suppose after the overall tone of the songs in this post, I should round it off by adding something more upbeat. Maybe something by REM. Or the Muppets. For that matter, why not both?

Furry Happy Monsters

[1] “About a god I’ve never seen, who never fails to favor me”, for example.